SOUL SEARCH

The Path to Fortune: a moment of confusion

A woman gives life to the world, that everyone has a mother is well known.

A man can spend his life trying to accomplish the same feat, but he will never be this kind of god: mate, guardian, sponsor, patron, coordinator, explorer,

Man the conqueror, the mimic, the fool will probably destroy far more than he will ever create...

And the will to create wanes with each passing year.

I have seen the one I love, as a young boy being attended to by his mother. He stands proudly surrounded by his toys. His fearless smile is the open highway of life, a parkway full of hopes and promises, a brave new world already full of lingering hatreds and debts to be paid between warring generations... I cried in confusion for him, but really it was for me. Home, family and what they mean to me, all thrown away, all denied, all lost, irrevocably changed by my own hand.

And still the image remains potent: a majestic highway guided by ancient, stately trees, crossing hills and mountains, fording streams, bridging rivers to the shores of a mighty sea. Man eternal. The kernel of a history about to unfold. Man the conqueror. His fires forge new life with savagery and ruin; he craves the very thing that will torture his soul.

The unqualified dreams of a child are in his eyes. How will he use his life? Everyone muses over the journey before them. Everyone dreams. A conqueror’s dream? It is surprisingly simple really, but remains a daunting task. His dream is to make life worth living for one other, immortal in the soul of just one other upon this earth.

That is all I really want.

1

I paused to watch the fires illuminate the face of this memorable night, but remained distracted by the cold stream of blood oozing into my shoes, soaking my woolen socks and chilling my toes. The dark sap of life in which I stood flowed cold over the worn stone steps, despite the blazing inferno of homes and businesses scorching my exposed hands and face. From the horror of the blackish red serpent to the impenetrable blizzard of swirling smoke and ash, I gazed to the top of the narrow street. Cold toes? I briefly considered the souls of the men who had tapped this blood from what had just been warm, living bodies. The roar of the blaze and an explosion woke me. Paint blistered and flaked in the heat. Limestone burned. I took two more steps and nearly slipped on the wet stone. With the capital falling around me, navigating my way up these pilgrim’s steps to the Temple of Trezibond would be tricky. Lifting one foot out of the sluggish, viscous current, I sighed.

With a raised eyebrow, I noted that no corpses littered this twisting passage up to the city's crown, as they did below in the streets and squares, choking the alleyways and doorways and virtually every square in this city. Down by the harbour’s magnificent Watergate, the hottest fires now roared ... flames leapt high, above the red tiled roofs of the guild mansions, and even higher than the fantastic gold work gracing the cornices and spires of the lesser temples and urban palaces. That consuming furnace blazed like one fantastic beacon, calling out to the world as though all the Lords of Chaos roared in defiance and scorn. Of course! It was the funeral pyre of a god in which I stood! No man could deny that a god had not fallen. City of Emperors, City of Berek the Lawgiver, the divine who resided over Great Trebizond had let the eternal city be immolated by men of weak faith – whether their own worshippers or the invaders, what did it matter? Still, it was hard to believe.

Yet, more than just gods had died in these few days of siege.

Stoked on the fat of the denizens of Trezibond, these choking bonfires produced a tremendous column of oily, black smoke that hung unwavering for days in the windless sky. I noted ironically that this very same smoke and its putrid stench clung to my robes. Sweeping my hand awkwardly across the front of my clothes, I thought I might never get the smell out ... so too, I might never forget the screams of the tortured thrown living into these fires. I might never forget the army of old priests walking in stoic silence into the open, public furnaces. I might never forget the innocent babes, the restless children, the stupefied women, all tossed into the cleansing flame, whether dead or alive. Perhaps the men, who died on the end of foreign blades, suffered the least. Or perhaps they suffered more knowing well the cost of their failure and the fate of their families in the realms beyond this life.

Did I really expect to get away from these images so easily?

The blood under my climbing feet deepened as the sober planes of the polished granite Temple loomed above me. Surely, so much blood could not be possible? But here it was, ankle deep and flowing, defying reason, mocking sanity. Much of the nobility of Trezibond had sought refuge up here behind these ecclesiastical walls, hoping to negotiate for their lives with the red soldiers that had breached the harbour’s legendary defenses days ago. The memory of the foreign ships in the bay and the attack at early dawn remained potent in my mind. A great, red wave of barbarism set against the heart rock of civilization. Cousins set upon each other by malevolent gods, each immortal trying to eat out the other's heart while it still beat -- man, as always, the victim.

It is said that a clutch of baby eagles will be fed by the parents equally, unless conditions suddenly change and the parents find themselves unable to feed their children ... one or more are then chosen to starve. Denied nourishment, their siblings are allowed to grow strong ... naturally, the weak soon fall prey to the inequitable appetites of the strong. The race survives. Individuals don’t. Even the walls of the Temple could not protect individuals ... but that was not the way of their god, Berek, now was it? I reminded myself, finding no warmth in the ironic twist to life this god had for his worshippers.

The denizens of this capital saw so much armour, so many glittering weapons, so many soldiers pouring over what had long been considered flawless defenses, that they had merely stood in shock. Trezibond the Great. Trezibond the Impregnable. Trezibond the Arrogant had been brought to kneel in its own blood. I asked myself with what commodities did the nobility of this capital now expect to negotiate their lives? What did they possess that the common populace lacked? Deemed unnecessary by the invaders, lives were counted worthless. There would be no slaves. Riches? Everything ... every single thing of value would be sacked and taken aboard the awaiting ships anyway. So many fleshy bodies, so many minds and good hearts wasted in a snap! There had never been such an orgy of death in this world ... and the cream of society hoped to escape, I thought shaking my head. Oh, there would be many promises, but promises could hardly be seen as a commodity of intrinsic worth, not now, not ever.

Tooled by artistic hands whose creativity knew no bounds, the famous West doors now hung asunder, dangling impotently from their hinges. I stepped through the breached gates into the Temple close, onto the banks of a lake of blood with corpses floating like a dense mat of water lilies … white asses, shoulders, breasts and noses pushing through the glassy, black surface. Here was the reservoir that would feed blood to the narrow descending steps for hours. Here death was king. And still more blood greeted me as I waded out of the temple yard, up to what was only a few days ago the Fifty Steps of Fifty Prayers, white granite steps polished by generations of kneeling pilgrims. Where were the whispered prayers now? I wondered, surveying the slaughter, following a different red carpet that had been rolled out by the conquering soldiers. I expected the wealthy, the important, the noble had not bartered hard enough -- but then they didn't really have a chance, did they?

So much death had not visited this world in a thousand years. So much hatred had been vented in two days and three nights ... in fact, it seemed as if the hate had sublimated into a being, a faceless monster responsible for the vivisections, the castrations, the disembowelments, the mutilation of humanity, a monster who decreed that decapitated heads should become more numerous than paving stones.

Oh, and this monster had a name.

Glutted and distended on infant flesh and the ripe testicles of youths, greasy rats lined the doorways ready to jump to their next, drifting meal. Everything floated down the side of the hill. At the bottom of the city lay the harbour ... I dreaded to think what those gull and carp rich waters had become like, the remains of an entire dynasty, an entire civilization washed out into the deep waters of a silent, polluted bay. From the doorway, it appeared that the mighty and endless sea had an appetite far keener than even the rats, or even the lusts of this foreign army for that matter, because as the sun set under the thick clouds of the burning city, the blue and sparkling waters continued to dance with innocent beauty before my eyes ... and before the eyes of the masked, red soldiers ... and the rats ... and the dying eyes of the thousands upon thousands who would never see this world again.

I turned on the threshold of the Temple to gaze upon what must certainly be one of the greatest wonders of our civilization in Uls. My eyes traced the granite base, the cut marble and sandstone lines worked into a graphic history of achievement. This art depicted faith in something better than this life. Man had come and man had settled the coast of this world guided by his unbending faith. The walls and columns told his tale. But intertwined, there were other tales too, depictions of greed and violence, poverty and cruelty displayed with robust honesty and shocking beauty – sadly, I thought that there would be no one left to carve the tale of evil that had befallen them in this unforgiving year.

Here before me, the vices and weaknesses of these very same men were portrayed as scripture, woven in the silks hanging from the walls and inlaid with gold on the huge, polished furniture littering this shrine. Perhaps their story would be told by the herders and traders and scavengers who would come to find this gem of civilization gouged from the face of the very hills on which it had been founded, a priceless relic now nothing more than a smashed and useless trinket. Perhaps history would remember this city with kindness, its ills forgotten or at least overlooked, as an unspoken eulogy for the crime it suffered. Perhaps its memory might even live on ...

But I don't write histories.

As I stood, absorbing the ruin that had been inflicted upon Trezibond, the horrors coalesced into one grand climax here under the marvelous, soaring dome. Before me, the inky smoke of fires fed on the fat flesh of the noble and wealthy rose and gathered under these heights, mixing in the soft evening light streaking down from the ancient glass panes that illuminated the spiritual journeys of mankind retold with passion in faded frescos of gold leaf. The genius of this architecture, its balanced volumes, hierarchy and scale was a feast for the eye at every turn. But any beauty I beheld faded against the screams echoing through out the dignified basilica. Screams and the stench of an invading army's abattoir stole the grandeur of this building from my heart. Faith no more ... I stepped from the shadows of the entry hall and stood in the light of the red fire burning low over the fleshy weight of a mountain of corpses.

end of chapter one